“I think,” he answered almost indistinguishably, “I think that I meant to sit here—­to sit in the room beyond, where the mock stars shine.”

Olivia uttered an exclamation.

“How could he possibly know that?” she said.

“But what does he mean?” asked St. George.

She crossed swiftly to a portiere hanging by slender rings from the full height of the lofty room, and at her bidding St. George followed her.  She pushed aside the curtain, revealing a huge cave of the dark, a room whose walls were sunk in shadow.  But overhead the ceiling was constellated in stars, so that it seemed to St. George as if he were looking into a nearer heaven, homing the far lights that he knew.  The Pleiades, Orion, and the Southern Cross, blazing down with inconceivable brilliance, were caught and held captive in the cup of this nearer sky.

“It is like this at night,” Olivia said, “but we see nothing in the daytime, save the vague outlines of here and there a star.  But how could he have known?  There is no other door save this.”

The old man had followed them and stood, his eyes fixed on the shining points.

“It is done well,” he said softly, “it makes one feel the firmament.”

St. George, thrilling with the strangeness of what he saw, and the strangeness of being there with Olivia and this weird old man of the mountain, turned toward him almost fearfully.  How did he know, indeed?

“Ah well,” he said, striving to reassure her, “I’ve no doubt he has wandered in here some evening, while you were at dinner.  No doubt—­”

He stopped abruptly, his eyes fixed on the old man’s hand.  For as he lifted it St. George had thought that something glittered.  Without hesitation he caught the old man’s arm about the wrist, and turned his hand in his own palm.  In the thin fingers he found a small sealed tube, filled with something that looked like particles of nickel.

“Do you mind telling me what that is?” asked St. George.

Old Malakh’s eyes, liquid and brown and very peaceful, met his own without rebuke.

“Do you mean the gem?” he asked gently.  “It is a very beautiful ruby.”

Then St. George saw upon the hand that held the sealed tube a ring of matchless workmanship, set with a great ruby that smouldered in the shadow where they stood.  Olivia looked at St. George with startled eyes.

“He was not wearing this when we first saw him,” she said.  “I haven’t seen him wearing it at all.”

St. George confronted the old man then and spoke with some determination.

“Will you please tell us,” he said, “what there is in this tube, and how you came by this ring?”

Old Malakh looked down reflectively at his hand, and back to St. George’s face.  It was wonderful, the air of courtliness and urbanity and delicate breeding which persisted through age and infirmity and the fallow mind.

“I wish that I might tell you,” he said humbly, “but I have only little lights in my head, instead of words.  And when I say them, they do not mean—­what they shine.  Do you not see?  That is why every one laughs.  But I know what the lights say.”